She wouldn’t have to wait until the yacht was finished. That thought only lasted a moment. Charles was looking at her with his calm, brown eyes and she almost blurted it out. But caution held her back. It had only been a day and Dorian Rowland had amply demonstrated he was uncertainty personified. What if he suddenly quit? What if he lacked the skill to finish the yacht? She’d do better to wait and see if her project could be completed before she told a soul. It wouldn’t do to be seen as a failure just now. If she was to fail, she wanted to do it in secret.
Charles found them an acceptable tea shop where they could have sandwiches and a quiet table. He was solicitous, asking after her wellbeing, her brother’s plans to return to Oxford and her mother’s time in the country. The more solicitous he was, the more the contrast grew. He was nothing like Dorian Rowland. To start with, he wore all of his clothes and he was unlikely to steal a kiss in a public place. Charles was safe. Charles was comfortable. But she couldn’t help but wonder—would Charles’s chest be as muscled beneath his linen shirt? It certainly wouldn’t be as tanned. She blushed a little at the thought. It was most untoward of her to be picturing gentlemen without their clothes on. She could blame that, too, on Dorian.
‘Miss Sutton? Are you all right?’
‘Oh, yes. Why do you ask?’ Elise dragged her thoughts back to the conversation.
‘I asked you a question.’ Charles smiled indulgently. ‘What are you planning to do with the shipyard? My father would be able to help you arrange a sale. I’m sure you’d rather be off to join your mother.’
Actually, that was the last place she wanted to be. How to answer without lying? She opted for part of the truth. ‘I’m thinking about keeping the yard, after all,’ Elise offered quietly, waiting for his shocked response.
To his credit, Charles kept his shock to a minimum. He didn’t disagree with her, but merely voiced his concern. ‘Miss Sutton, your fortitude is commendable. But you have no one to run the place. Surely you can’t be thinking of doing it on your own?’ She knew what he was thinking. To do so was to invite social ostracism for the last time. She’d already skated so near the edge on other occasions. With her father gone, there’d be little pity left for her.
‘I have someone.’
‘Who?’ Charles reached for his tea cup.
‘A Mr Dorian Rowland,’ Elise said with a confidence she didn’t feel.
The tea cup halted in mid-air, never quite making it to his mouth. ‘Dorian Rowland? The Scourge of Gibraltar?’ The tea cup clattered into its saucer with an undignified clunk. ‘My dear Miss Sutton, you must be rid of him immediately.’
She’d hired someone called the Scourge of Gibraltar?
Elise was glad she wasn’t holding a tea cup, too, or it might have followed suit. ‘Why?’ she managed to utter.
The horror in Charles Bradford’s eyes was so exaggerated it was almost comical and it would have been, too, if it wasn’t aimed at the one man she’d pinned all her hopes on.
‘Don’t you know, Miss Sutton? He isn’t received.’
Chapter Five
‘I was not under the impression craftsmen were in the habit of being received at all,’ Elise answered coolly, some irrational part of her leaping to Dorian’s defence. Perhaps it was simply that she wanted to defend the shipyard and her own judgement, or her brother’s judgement for that matter. He’d been the one to recommend Dorian.
Charles smiled indulgently. ‘Oh, he’s not a craftsman, not by birth anyway.’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that.’ Elise mustered all the bravado she could. With a label like the Scourge of Gibraltar she could guess the reasons without the specifics, though details would be nice.
Charles set his jaw, looking fiercer than she’d ever seen him, a look at odds with his usually calm demeanour. ‘Of course you don’t know and understandably so. It’s hardly a topic of discussion worthy of a lady. I will say only this: he’s not fit company for you.’
The fervency in Charles’s eyes should have warmed her even if his sentiments did not. She ought to overlook his condescension in light of its motives: he was putting her honour first. He was thinking of her, concerned about who she associated with, even if the tone with which that care was voiced sounded a bit high in the instep. Her father had been a self-made peer, knighted for his efforts, and Charles’s own father was a baronet, neither family far removed from the efforts of work that had attained such positions. Yet she could not warm to Charles’s efforts with more than polite kindness. Her own body and mind were still engaged in recalling a less-decent gentleman with blunt manners and a blind eye for scandal.
‘I appreciate your concern, although it’s hardly fair to tell me he’s unsuitable and then not tell me why.’ As if she needed reasons other than the ones Dorian had already provided this very afternoon with his unorthodox kissing episode. Out of reflex and remembrance, Elise’s eyes dropped ever so briefly to Charles’s lips. She couldn’t imagine Charles behaving so outrageously. The thought was not well done of her. There could be no true comparison between the two. Charles was all a gentleman should be and Dorian Rowland simply was not. Charles would be eminently more preferable. Wouldn’t he? He was precisely the sort of man her brother wanted her to find: attractive, steady and financially secure. But even with all these credentials, Elise couldn’t help but feel Charles would still come out lacking.
Charles seemed to hold an internal debate with himself, his features suddenly relaxing, decision made. He leaned across the table in confidentiality. ‘He is Lord Ashdon’s son, second son,’ he offered in hushed tones as if that explained it all.
It certainly explained some, like how William might have encountered him at an Oxford house party. Even after William’s explanation, she’d been hard pressed to believe William had stumbled across a master shipbuilder in the course of his usual social routine. But the one word her brain kept coming back to was scandal. It was the very last thing she needed. Her father’s death had been sensational, but not scandalous. Dorian Rowland, however, was both. If society had seen him today, one of their own, half-naked and toting tools around the shipyard, shouting orders, it would be outraged. Then again, it already was. If Charles could be believed, Dorian’s transgressions preceded this latest. This venture into the shipyard was just one of many escapades for him. But she would be the one who suffered.
It was slowly coming to her that Dorian Rowland simply didn’t care who he perpetrated this fraud on. He could have told her who he was and he hadn’t. He’d let her believe he was a craftsman. And why not? He wasn’t received. He had nothing to lose, whereas she had everything to risk.
Her place in society was tenuous. She was the daughter of a dead man who possessed a non-hereditary title. Society had to acknowledge her father. It didn’t have to acknowledge her, especially if she put herself beyond the pale. She had only her virtue and reputation to speak for her if she wished to remain in society’s milieu. To be honest, her reputation wasn’t the best to start with and this latest effort to keep the shipyard open wouldn’t help, with or without Dorian Rowland’s presence.
Oblivious to the tumult of her thoughts, Charles leaned across the table ready to impart another confidence ‘Enough of such unpleasant things. I confess I had other reasons for seeing you. I wanted to ask if you might consider going for a drive some afternoon? I know you’re in mourning, but a drive wouldn’t be amiss.’
Hardly. Elise thought of her mother’s version of mourning in the countryside. A drive was nothing beside her mother’s card parties and dinners at the squire’s, and Elise had made no secret that she’d set many of the trappings of mourning aside. All right, all of them. She did wear half-mourning, but that was the only concession she continued to make and even that transition had been rushed by society’s standards. She returned Charles’s smile, but the offer raised little excitement. ‘I’d like that.’ She really should try harder to like him, to see him as more than